


Who You Were Before

by pertainstothesea



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 22:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pertainstothesea/pseuds/pertainstothesea
Summary: Shitty, through time travel, is Coach Bittle.





	Who You Were Before

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on Tumblr, quite a while ago, and I really just want a place where it still exists if the website ends.

Shitty is Bitty’s dad. 

He was sent back in time, landed in Georgia, and changed his name. Maybe he thought it would be funny, maybe he hoped he’d find Bitty’s family and rely on their goodwill. He starts using a southern accent, at first to blend in and then because he can’t quite remember how his Boston voice worked. When he first meets Suzanne, he just wants to see a familiar face. She looks so much like Bitty, and he sees where Bits got so many of his mannerisms. But soon, there’s something more. When he realizes he’s developing real feelings for her, he’s terrified. He uses all the resources available to him in the early 90s to try to find the real Coach Bittle, but… it seems that he doesn’t exist. He pretends to be an orphan. No family to be found.

He tries to not change the future too much. He spent so long in the past already that he’s started to forget everything Bittle told him about his childhood. As soon as Suzanne told him she was pregnant, he’d started a journal where he wrote up his resolutions for fatherhood.

His son would never be locked in a closet, literal or metaphorical.

A few things change. Bitty isn’t quite as scared of checking. Shitty was still the first person he came out to, but it was before he got to Samwell, and it was as his father and not his teammate that Shitty thanked him for his trust and reassured him that things would be okay.

Coach still didn’t go to any of Bitty’s games. He wasn’t sure how safe it was to be in the same place as his younger self at the same time. The one exception he made was for Jack and Bitty’s wedding. He cried, of course. Partly out of joy for his son, but also out of sadness. His younger self got to be up there, best man to his best friend, but he couldn’t talk to Jack at all except as his new father-in-law. All his friends in one room, and none of them recognized him. Bitty thought it would be funny if they took a “’stache buddies” picture together, so they did. Did anyone have a picture with their younger self, he wondered?

He counts down the days until the time travel. He remembers it well. The flash of light. The screams of Jack and Bitty as they watched him fall through a tear in the universe into 1990s Georgia. Will it happen the same way this time? he wonders. Is it a constantly changing loop? Is he trapped in a constant cycle of always trying to be a better father, a better man? Will it happen at all this time? Will he ever be able to tell his wife?

The day of, he watches the clock. At 4:23, he excuses himself, goes outside, and stares down at his phone, taking a deep breath before pressing the button for “Son :-)” and lifting the phone to his ear. He gets Bitty’s voicemail, and he can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. He doesn’t leave a message. Instead, he ends the call and scrolls up, finger hovering over the name “son in law :-).” Bitty had put in both names for him. He takes a deep breath, changes the contact name to “Jack,” and dials.

“Coach, Eric is fine, we’re dealing with a situation here and we’ll call you back, okay?” Jack says in one rapid breath after the third ring.

“You’re at Johnson’s lab,” Coach– Shitty– Coach Shitty says before he can hang up. The line is silent. For a few terrible seconds he thinks Jack hung up on him.

“How do you know that?”

“Is Shitty gone yet?” This silence is even worse. It’s the kind of silence that could be taking a fraction of a second or a chunk of a century.

“What do you mean, ‘yet,’ Coach?” Jack asks, each word more hesitant than the last. He takes a deep breath.

“Time travel’s a bitch, brah. One minute you’re there in Johnson’s lab, the next you’ve lived a whole lifetime and ended up as one of your friend’s dads. And then you’re your best bro’s father-in-law, and you’re really fucking scared that he won’t believe you and you’ll lose everything again.”

_X_ _X_

He spends the next day in the car by himself, driving up to Johnson’s lab in rural Massachusetts. It’s a silent ride. He’ll put on the radio for two or three minutes at a time, but clicks it off quickly each time. It’s not a fun road trip. Those are hard to do when you’re on your own.

He hasn’t been this scared since– well, since the time travel accident. So, yesterday, or thirty years ago, or yesterday and thirty years ago. They all blended together. He didn’t even know how he wanted this to go. Even if it was possible, would he even want them to treat him like their friend again? After so long, he’d started to get used to being slightly distant, removed from the shenanigans his younger self had delighted in.

_X_ _X_

“Y’all need to bear with me for a minute, but what the actual literal fuck is going on here,” Bitty said, pacing the living room. “Did we erase my real dad from time? Was Shitty always my dad?” He stopped suddenly. “Oh, lord, my dad was the first person I smoked weed with. Oh no. My dad knows about every illegal thing I’ve ever done.”

Shitty shrugged. “To be fair, I obviously didn’t know at the time, and I was encouraging you the whole way.” Bitty spun around and pointed at him accusingly.

“I’m not a junior, then! You named yourself after me! You’re the junior!” 

“I still don’t think that’s the way it works. Look, I don’t know if I erased your real dad from existence or what. I do know that I’ve made some things better, so I don’t think I was always your dad– or maybe I’m just doing better than last time. I just… I just don’t know what to do now? It didn’t seem right to never tell you guys what happened, but it didn’t seem right to try to stop it, either.”

The three of them sat in silence. 

“What do we do now?” Jack asked. 

“We have to try to undo this.” Bitty looked determined. “Johnson sent you back then, he can figure out a way to bring you back now.”

“No.” 

At that one syllable, Jack and Bitty looked at Coach/Shitty like he’d grown three heads. 

“Even if it’s possible, I don’t want you to erase over twenty years of my life because we didn’t intend for them to go this way. I don’t want you to take away some of the best moments of my life.” He hated how small his voice sounded. “I’m not perfect, but I’ve been a damn good dad, and a damn good husband, and I don’t want to stop. I just want to be able to be honest about who I am and who I was with you.”

Bitty’s face softened, but only slightly. “You said you made some things better… This isn’t for my sake, is it? I don’t want you to be all self-sacrificing if that’s not what you really want. You can be selfish.”

Shitty shook his head. “Maybe if you’d caught me at the very beginning, that could’ve been my reasoning, but now… Look, I know I was your friend before I was your dad, and that’s kind of messed up, but… Your first steps. Your first words. All your figure skating competitions, the day I started teaching you to play hockey, the day you got accepted to Samwell and you were so, so happy, and I knew how much amazing stuff was waiting for you there… Believe me, I’m being selfish here. Don’t take all that from me. I only want to also be given the freedom to talk about Samwell, too.”

Bitty’s eyes were filled with tears, and he seemed to be struggling to find the right words. Jack instead reached out and grabbed his best friend’s shoulder, smiling. 

“We can work with that.”


End file.
